Simone Zelitch

Those watching the rise of Donald Trump may feel an eerie sense of déja vu, particularly if they read Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America.” Simone Zeilitch delineates the parallels between fact and fiction.

A Window Across the River By Brian Morton Harcourt, 304 pages, $25. * * *|Writers are often told not to write novels about writing. The temptation must be tremendous. After all, they know the territory and the tools, and to a novelist, few things are more gripping than the process of putting words on paper. But it is hard